How Much Fraud Is There In The USA
About five years ago, the Federal Trade Commission (FTC) released a statistical survey that about 25 million adult were victims of fraud. This is 11.2% of the adult population. In 2009, there was a reported 48.7 million incidences. Fraud is on the rise and fraudsters are laughing all the way to the bank, so as to speak.
The federal Trade Commission recently released a survey of the top types of fraud in the United States for 2009. Below are some of the most prevalent scams that are currently being targeted at US citizens.
1) Bogus weight loss products
It is ironical that in many cases the consumers of these products actually gained more weight than they had initially before using these products. The FTC registered more than 8 million cases of fraud involving weight-loss products that didn’t work.
2) Business opportunity fraud
The FTC says that over 6 million people were victims of business opportunity scams. These mostly came in work-at-home opportunities that were unworkable.
3) Buyers club fraud
Buyers clubs promise great deals on products and services. But then the consumer realizes that they have been charged for membership even though they never agreed to join
4) Foreign lottery fraud
Originally, these scams simply proclaimed that you are a winner in a major foreign lottery but in order to receive your prize, you had to submit an “administration fee” to cover processing charges. Nowadays, they have invented new tricks; they send to you a fake cheque with the winning amount then instruct you to send a cheque of lesser amount to cover taxes. It’s like trading a real cheque with a fake one.
5) Credit card fraud
Statistics show that over $2.8 million was lost due to credit card fraud.
These are just the top five in terms of numbers of people affected. There is so much more fraud in the form of tax evasion, money laundering and creditor fraud. Everyone and every business or organisation is a target. Thinking that you wouldn’t get scammed would be like standing in the middle of the NASCAR race track and expect not to end up in some cars under-carriage! It is true when they say if an offer seems too good to be true then it is most certainly too good to be true.
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